Many high performance internal combustion engines used for racecars employ carburetors for delivering fuel to the engines. Because a race car experiences extreme surges front to rear and side to side during its performance on the track, the fuel in the fuel bowl that supplies the fuel to the carburetor also tends to surge, so that the fuel in the fuel bowl sometimes tends to surge in the fuel bowl away from the carburetor. If the outlet port of the fuel bowl is adjacent the carburetor, there is a hazard of temporary starvation of fuel from the carburetor when the fuel surges away from the carburetor.
One solution for the problem is to provide two fuel bowls that straddle the carburetor, one fuel bowl on each side of the carburetor.
Another solution is to provide two fuel bowls that straddle the carburetor, one fuel bowl in front of the carburetor and the other fuel bowl behind the carburetor. This second design provides more fuel capacity and is less susceptible to the tendency of the fuel surging in the bowl. In order to assure proper delivery of fuel to the carburetor, especially during acceleration of the vehicle, a fuel supply outlet is positioned at the rear of the rear fuel bowl so as to assure that the fuel in the rear fuel bowl reaches the supply outlet upon acceleration of the vehicle. This assures that fuel will always surge toward a fuel port leading to the carburetor during extreme acceleration of the car.
In order to be able to provide fuel to the fuel bowls, a single fuel line leads from the fuel pump to one of the fuel bowls and a bypass line or “fuel transfer tube” extends from adjacent the one fuel bowl to the other fuel bowl. This supplies fuel from one fuel line and avoids having to use two fuel lines extending from the fuel pump to the two fuel bowls.
One of the prior art fuel transfer tube assemblies that communicates between the fuel bowls uses a specially designed sleeve-shaped seal at each of its ends to seal between the external end surfaces of the transfer tube and the opening of a fixture that communicates with the fuel bowl. The sealing sleeve provides only one sealing surface and is subject to damage when the transfer tube is being installed and when the fuel bowls are disassembled for adjustment and repair of the carburetor. The damaged sealing sleeve tends to leak fuel, and the location of the leak is at the top of the engine. The sleeve shaped seal, being of special design, typically is available only from the carburetor manufacturer, not likely from the typical hardware store.
Another prior art fuel transfer tube that extends between fuel bowls is a fuel transfer conduit that is cast as a part of the carburetor or as part of a kit or modular attachment to the carburetor. While the modular attachments simplify assembly, repair and adjustment of carburetors, they have not proven to be leak-proof, sometimes allowing fuel to leak from the carburetor assembly in the vicinity of the hot engine. It is difficult to repair the leak of this type of transfer tube.
All of the above-noted prior art fuel transfer tube assemblies include the hazard of fuel leakage about the carburetor and the hot engine below. If there is fuel leakage, these prior art devices are difficult to repair, as by acquiring the proper sealing sleeve that is a special order product, or by repairing the fuel transfer kit.
This invention addresses these problems.